A land deed recording the first organised attempt by British settlers to colonise Aotearoa has returned to our shores after 200 years.
In March 1826, a ship owned by the New Zealand Company with 60 prospective settlers on board arrived here from the UK in search of land, resources, and to begin a new colony.
Their ship stopped first at Pegasus Harbour on Stewart Island, before making the journey to the Marlborough Sounds and Wellington's Port Nicholson. It eventually made its way to Waiheke Island in September of that year.
The New Zealand Company attempted to purchase four islands on the Hauraki Gulf — Pakatoa, Rotoroa, Ponui, and Pakihi — including "all the trees growing … with the creeks, bays and harbours on the said Islands & sea three miles distant from their shores", it read.
"In exchange for that, they offered these rangatira a double-barrel gun, eight muskets, and a barrel of gunpowder," Auckland Museum curator Nina Finigan told 1News.
The document recorded an agreement between four representatives of the New Zealand Company and eight Māori rangatira, dated September 23, 1826. It was witnessed by 15 Māori rangatira — 14 of whom signed with their moko.
"We've been able to recognise some of the tupuna that are on the tuhinga tawhito (ancient markings) and they hail from Ngāti Pāoa," Tumuaki Māori's Te Arepa Morehu said.
But most of their names remain a mystery.
"You have letters that aren't in the Māori alphabet now. You would have people who were writing down what they heard," he explained.
The sale was abandoned amid the volatility of the Musket Wars.
"And so when the Rosanna left these shores never to return, it carried the documents back to London," Finigan said.
It had been held by the family of George Lyall — one of the directors of the first iteration of the New Zealand Company, and whose name is on the document — for nearly 200 years.
The land agreement surfaced at a London auction house in March this year. It was purchased by Auckland Museum for £42,000 (NZ$89,928.40) after "some private donors came out of the woodworks", Auckland Museum chief executive David Reeves said.
The water-damaged piece of New Zealand history returned to our shores after months of meticulous planning.
The taonga will be displayed at the Auckland War Memorial Museum sometime next year.
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